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Young Beginner In IT Sector seeking Advice

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Hello,
I have recently signed up to this forum as feel i can benifit from some great advice from the members from here, I am currently a Young 18 year old seeking for First Full time Job in IT, I completed an apprenticeship which lasted 15 months as a IT Technician and then in February Until the end of this month working for the nhs as an IT audit although i have been Doing desktop Support as the system was not completed for us

Please may you review My cv and covering Letter as i feel it is not optimised
Also any recommendation on any Certs and job role would be greatly welcomed

covering Letter

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you in application to your advertised job position of whatever.

As you can see from my CV, I have had experience in various different areas in IT but mainly focused on the customer support side of things along with the deployment of new infrastructure.

During my time on my apprenticeship, I learnt a great deal surrounding real world scenarios of how IT is utilised and deployed; I gathered this knowledge via hands on experience of researching, testing, documenting and finally deploying aUbuntubasedZimbramail server whereby I aided my line manager in upgrading the current system by migrating the old system to the new.

Another aspect of my apprenticeship saw me rolling out an Operating System upgrade to the end users of the company; from Windows XP to Windows 7. This gave me a challenge of how to successfully migrate users including local data across systems in which I devised a simple yet effective solution of asking and confirming that users had copied any crucial data from their computer onto some removable media. Although this solution was not elegant and relied on the end user, it was the most simple in this situation.

I Feel I am greatly suitable for this role as I was a It support Technician in my role at tagish where I had similar responsibilities

Please find my CV included and I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely

Paul Watson

Click to expand...

Attached Files:

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Hello and welcome to CF as judging from your cover letter and the experience you're currently gaining you're on the right track. Keep learning and working hard and with time you'd branch out to other areas of IT that interest you.

Let me introduce myself. Im Paul Watson and i live in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Although im 29 and have no IT expereice job wise and currently looking for IT Support work too.

I have just done my A+ at the back end of last year and im currently doing the Network + exams which would both look great on your CV at your age and with your experience so far. It would backup the knowledge you have already gained.

Let me introduce myself. Im Paul Watson and i live in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Although im 29 and have no IT expereice job wise and currently looking for IT Support work too.

I have just done my A+ at the back end of last year and im currently doing the Network + exams which would both look great on your CV at your age and with your experience so far. It would backup the knowledge you have already gained.

Good luck with your venture!!

Click to expand...

Im Currently ending a contract on friday as its due to end been working at the NHS Newcastle doing desktop support, is this worth putting in my cv?

As well as the bullet points of experience in your CV for the two jobs you held have you thought about adding a small paragraph or two on your actual role and responsibilities. Also add to the top line more to the top line about your work related qualities, you have a good amount about your personal interest etc but it seems to be lacking the former.

HTH and good luck, you have much more exposure than myself at the age of 18 so just keep plugging away and your experience will build in time.

I was advised not to add anymore about the role I was holding, as they wanted a CV that had all the information on and had the key points down , what would you recommend me adding to the top line from my CV, In the about me section i have added a few tasks i carried out and what personal qualities was shown during them tasks?

Some of my thoughts, looking at this with my managers hat on: (Warning. This may seem a bit harsh)

I'd like to see dates of your jobs. Your apprenticeship reads as 14 months, which is a bit of a strange length (without doing any research on apprenticeships on my part). However it could be 12 months if you started say July 30th and finished Sept 1st. Don't make me think! I may come to the wrong conclusion.

There's not much on the new job, but it was only 7 weeks. I'd like an idea of what you did, were you in to do a rollout? If not, why only 7 weeks Don't make me think! I may come to the wrong conclusion.

You've listed your skills in almost exactly the reverse order that I want to see them. The real meat is at the bottom, as I assume the bottom three were what you spent the most time supporting. If I've got 50 CVs in front of me I might put you on the "No" pile before I've even reached the last 3.
I would also like to see what your core duties were and what tasks were ad-hoc, especially if I've mentioned them in the job spec. Don't make me think! I may come to the wrong conclusion.

I like your education, that shows me you are probably a logical thinker with good communication skills. Core qualities in IT.

Skills:
I'd like to see this before your employment history, and I'd like to see evidence in your work history of any skill you list here. Basically a list of your core experience. You can give me the extras in the employment section.
Also, be careful about using words like extensive. What you think of as extensive experience may be considered a bit weak to someone who's been supporting XP from day one. It's a fine balance between over-egging the pudding and selling yourself short though.

About me:

Aha! Here it is. More explanation about your recent contract. It still doesn't tell me why it was only 7 weeks though. Coupled with your slightly suspicious length of apprenticeship that's a question that would need to be answered at the interview, if I give you one.
The next part is riddled with mistakes, attention to details doesn't seem that great. I'd like to see that explanation in the employment section and expanded a little. Did you do telephone support, email support, did you just pick up tickets from 1st line?

F1. Don't care. Even worse, it might land on the desk of someone who hates F1 and thinks anyone who follows it is a bit weird.
Oh dear, even worse. Football teams. Never give anyone any reason for their irrational prejudices to cloud their logical judgement.

In conclusion:

I took time to analyse this in depth because I think you have some good skills buried in there for a service desk/desktop support role. You're just presenting them in such a way that I have to dig for the information I want and form conclusions which may hamper your journey to the "Consider for interview" folder.

Key things I want to see/know :
Why are you no longer doing those jobs? Were they fixed term?
What did you spend most of you time doing, day-to-day. I want to know whether you have the core skills I'm looking for. I'd like to see these listed at the top so I can judge whether it's worth my time reading any more.(Which it would be)
For the jobs themselves, You need to expand on your key skills .For example if a key skill is 'Hardware Support' I would have questions about which hardware. Mention what you have supported here (e.g. analog phones, IP phones, printers, faxes etc) and tailor it to the job spec so you don't go obscuring the important facts.
Then I'd like to see a little of how your apprenticeship worked. For example, were you seconded to teams, were you doing a first/2nd line role all the way through. Did you answer calls to log issues. Seriously, I want to know this stuff. Let me know about any other experience you have with anything I've mentioned in the job spec that aren't in your core skills.

At the end of the day, I want to see cold, hard verifiable facts that are relevant to the job I've advertised.

I have contacted my training provider that i used to complete my apprenticeship got all details of my qualifications i gained and also revamped my cv with the above tips, please may you review my most recent

Many thanks

Attached Files:

Now I'm going to get a bit picky:
 Experience in both a Large Enterprise Environment and Small business Environment
Why is this mentioned first? Maybe an idea to throw it in but not first. You work experience tells me (still having to dig for this though) that you have worked in a small business and a large business.

 Experience in Windows Server 2003 SBS and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise
 Experience in VMware Sphere
 Exposure to IIS and MS SQL Server Configurator
How much experience. did you once walk past someone who was doing it? With your experience I'm not going to believe these are your core skills, especially since they cover a lot of ground.

 Extensive Experience in Windows XP, Vista and 7 (All SKUs) and in Microsoft Office 2003,2007 and 2010 Packages
Like it, although the pedant in me is shouting "What, even Windows 7 Basic??". I'm also wondering how you managed time to get extensive knowledge of all these at the same time as learning all the server, IIS etc stuff. I suspect you have yet again given me the icing on the cake before you've given me the cake.

 Extensive Experience in Zimbra Mail Server
 Experience in Zenoss
 Experience in Backup Exec
 Basic Exposure to Linux, i.e. Basic BASH and installation
If the company or the role you are applying for doesn't use these technologies, they could really care less.

 Some Exposure to basic Microsoft CRM abilities
A non-sentence. Get rid.

 Extensive Experience in Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Packages
This should be number 2 or 3 on the list. Hardware support should also be listed.

I think you are still being too specific here. Cut it down to 6 maybe, you can tell me about the rest in the specific jobs because you're just repeating yourself a lot. If you used a technology in both jobs then it's a good candidate to be on this list.

I like how you've added a few sentences about the NHS job, I'd like to see the same for the apprenticeship, especially since this is where most of your experience lies. Bullet points can only tell me so much.

In the qualifications you have added pass to each item. Is there another option like "Merit"? Lose the passes. They're either not telling me anything (if you didn't pass it shouldn't be on there) or they're telling me you didn't do well enough to gain any extra credit.

The 'About me' section is pretty redundant once you take out the stuff that should be in the employment section. One thing I'd be interested in knowing is why you chose an IT apprenticeship when there is no sign of that in your school record. I'm seeing maths, science, English and construction. What changed your mind away from construction? That's something I might go over in the cover letter rather than a CV.

Still some spelling/grammar mistakes in there as well but only minor ones this time.

Bear in mind that I am analysing this from the point of view of you applying for a help/service desk or junior desktop support role.

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